


thea rilow is fourteen when she goes to two back-to-back funerals

by florapaw



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 07:33:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11352792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florapaw/pseuds/florapaw
Summary: shh lets pretend this is goodI wanna write for these babies again soon aaa





	thea rilow is fourteen when she goes to two back-to-back funerals

Thea Rilow is five when she breaks her first dolly. She sits on the rug, tears coursing down her chubby cheeks, and tries to piece together the porcelain. The smiling face stares up at her with its glassy eyes. She gathers it all up in her arms and toddles to Hanschen’s room. Hanschen is six. He knows a lot. Her brother looks up as she enters. He puts down his little red matchbox car and wordlessly takes the doll. He watches, eyes narrowing, nose crinkling, and then puts it a cardboard box and proclaims that there isn’t anything Mama or Papa can do to help her. He gives Thea his stuffed bear and tells her to be brave.

Thea Rilow is six when she enters kindergarten. Mama is teary-eyed and tells Hanschen that he cannot let go of her hand on the way to school. Her brother nods and starts walking down the street. Thea is excited. Hanschen told her all the fun stories of school and she absolutely cannot contain her ecstasy. Hanschen tells her to stop, and when she does, he bends down and tightens her shoelaces. Thea is very happy to be going to school with her big brother.

Thea Rilow is seven when her first tooth comes loose. It hurts when she eats, and when she complains about it to Hanschen, he tells her to be patient. It’ll come out when its ready to come out, he says. Thea puffs her cheeks and stamps her feet. It’s a nuisance and she just wants it to come out. Hanschen, with a devious sparkle in his eye, tells her there is one thing she can do to pull out her tooth. They tie some of Mama’s pretty violet string around and around the tooth, and Hanschen warns her that it’ll hurt. But Thea shakes her head. She’s a big girl now. When he pulls the string, the tooth pops out cleanly. She wakes up the next morning, her tooth has been exchanged for a coin.

Thea Rilow is eight when Hanschen tries to teach her to ride her bike. She’s worried. The bike wobbles under her weight and she can’t seem to believe her brother when he promises her it won’t hurt. He runs beside her, two hands firmly pressed on the seat of her bike, and she pedals as fast as her little legs can go. He lets her go and she rides a few feet before the bike topples over and the pedal digs into her leg. She’s crying and Hanschen hurries to pull the bike off. Her leg is bleeding – which only scares her further – and sobs that she _never_ wants to ride her bike again. Hanschen presses a band aid and a kiss onto her bleeding leg. Two days later, she rides behind Hanschen down the street with a wide grin across her face.

Thea Rilow is nine when a heat wave comes over. She and Hanschen spend all their time outdoors, running through the sprinkler, wind and sun scratching their cheeks. Mama chatises them for bringing water indoors. Hanschen laughs and annoys Mama by shaking his hair and flicking water everywhere. Thea tries to copy, but her hair is pulled into braids so it doesn’t work as well as she hoped. The heat wave disappears after a week, and Thea tugs on Hanschen’s hand and they stand out in the rain, heads tipped towards the Heavens, and toes curling into the wet grass.

Thea Rilow is ten when Hanschen grows up. It happened gradually, but she chose to ignore it, until one day when she asked if Hanschen could help her with her homework, he shook his head and wordlessly ascended the stairs to the second floor. Then he walked a pace ahead of her to school. Then he didn’t acknowledge her when they passed each other at school. But Thea had lots of friends, and she spoke to him over the dinner table. She could live with that.

Thea Rilow is eleven when she grows up too. Maybe it was the age; on the cusp of girlhood and womanhood. She had yet to bleed like Anna and Martha, but she began to experiment with clothing. She wore more grown up dresses and wore her mother’s heels, occasionally pursing her lips and putting on lipstick. She had to admit she had gotten pretty good at that. She developed her first crush – Melchior Gabor. A lot of girls found him attractive and she was no different. Thea asked Melchior to kiss her, but he turned her down. She kissed Otto Lammermeier behind the hall instead.

Thea Rilow is twelve when she invites her friends over to her house for her first sleepover. She nervous because she wants it to be perfect so she can do it again. Martha and Anna giggle and make jokes all night long, Wendla is tired and half asleep, and Thea is content.

Thea Rilow is thirteen when she and Hanschen finally have a proper conversation. They’re at the park on a picnic with their family when suddenly they’re alone. It starts off awkward but pretty soon it’s a wonderful, ecstatic feeling. Hanschen tells her of Ernst Robel, a quiet boy in his class who he thinks he likes. Thea doesn’t tell him about her crush on Melchior. Somehow it feels wrong. Then Hanschen gives her smiles and apologises for not talking to her a lot. He says it’s because they don’t have common interests anymore. Thea tells him she understands. They don’t talk freely like that again.

Thea Rilow is fourteen when she goes to two back-to-back funerals. The first one is for Moritz Stiefel. She didn’t know him well (he occasionally snuck her candy and she liked to braid his hair in Church and that was about the furthest their relationship went), but he was a friend of Hanschen, so she stood beside her brother and slipped her hand into his while he stared at the coffin in the dull earth. Hanschen does the same when, a week later, she has to pull out her black dress again to watch as Wendla disappeared under six feet of dirt.

**Author's Note:**

> shh lets pretend this is good  
> I wanna write for these babies again soon aaa


End file.
